New APIs could herald more contextually aware apps in our future.

We all love it when our device does something unexpected and helpful. Many times these little assists are possible because our device understands our context. Do you have an app that tells you it’s about to rain? Then it knows where you are and what the current and expected weather is in your location.

We take this sort of functionality for granted with the likes of Google Now having radically transformed our devices from smart phones to simple assistants. And there’s more to come with services such as Google Assistant due for launch this year.

In the meantime, Google want’s to make it easier for developers to include this sort of contextually aware intelligence onto their apps. To achieve this they announced the awareness API at Google IO 2016. The new API includes support for 7 signals to provide app developers with more context with less effort.

The signals included in the API are:

time

location

places

beacons

headphones

activity

weather

You may think those are simple things that many apps already include, and you’d be right. However, with the new API developers can simply plug into these signals and get a known response back, and this could just be the beginning. As more sensors, services and technologies come online we could see more signals added to the API suit.

if you’re interested in this sort of thing we’ve attached the full IO presentation below.

Duncan Jaffrey Journalist

Duncan has been interested in technology since coding "Mary had a little Lamb" in Basic on his ZX Spectrum. A fan of all things Android, most days you'll find Duncan trawling the web for Android news or quietly editing away on Map Maker.